PURE DYSGRAPHIA WITH RELATIVE SPARING OF LOWER-CASE WRITING

We describe the cognitive analysis of a patient with acquired pure dys graphia. She presented a peculiar dissociation between lower- and uppe r-case handwriting: lower-case writing was relatively spared and showe d a significant superiority of words versus nonwords. Upper-case writi ng and oral spelling did not show lexical effects, but were affected b y item length. In all modalities errors consisted mainly of single gra phemic substitutions, deletions, insertions and transpositions, result ing in legal or illegal nonwords, and showed a similar distribution ac ross letter positions. These findings were suggestive of an impairment of the graphemic output buffer, which however revealed itself to diff erent degrees in the two handwriting styles.